


You can't stay a saint that long in the city

by thought



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Casual Ableism, Gen, Mental Illness, Multi, Polyamory, Trans Male Character, millennial fatalism as a lifestyle choice, non-medical transition, vaguely terrible people loving other vaguely terrible people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 11:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17559710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: In which the only thing keeping Newton Geiszler sane is the reassurance that the world's going to end. It's a 100% legitimate coping mechanism. This is fine.





	You can't stay a saint that long in the city

**Author's Note:**

> Not compliant with Uprising because I like being happy. A million thanks to [Theimpossumblepossum](http://theimpossumblepossum.tumblr.com) for her magic translation powers.  
> CW: tasteless jokes about suicidal ideation by someone who mostly doesn't mean it, super brief implications of disordered eating, a not-so-subtle PSA about opening doors for people, every character in this fic is an asshole. I am not a scientist and it shows.  
> As always, this is unapologetically self-indulgent and written at work instead of screaming into the void.

About a month before they save the world, Newt has a panic attack in the back corner of the lab. It's nothing special-- supplies being what they are he's using his anxiety meds only as-needed; he hasn't eaten in twenty-four hours but for three pots of coffee; he's been thinking about how he's either going to be dead or entirely obsolete in the near future; it's a fucking Tuesday, pick a reason. That's not the important part. The important part is that Hermann finds him, because for all of his disapproving frowns and judgemental vegetable-eating stares, he is just as likely to be in the lab at 3:00 a.m. as Newt is. The important thing is, Hermann finds him and isn't even an asshole about it, does all the "right" things with the sort of methodical deliberateness that means he's looked this shit up. So that’s. A thing. But still, not the main thing.

The main thing is, Hermann's cell phone goes off in the midst of the whole mess (apparently everybody's just up at fuck o'clock in the morning, it's a goddamn party) and Hermann rests a hand on his shoulder while he scrabbles to answer it, and just before he swipes he mutters, absently, "I'm sorry, dear boy, a moment," and then goes straight in to swearing courteously at his sister in clipped German.

Newt doesn't pay it much mind, at the time, he's a little distracted with the complexities of getting oxygen into his bloodstream and keeping all the coffee from coming straight back up. But later, staring at the ceiling in his tiny room, his mind latches on to the throw-away comment and starts shredding it to scraps. First, and most important, Newt's next area of study is going to be temporal consciousness transference, because there is no fucking way any self-respecting millennial can say "dear boy" without any degree of irony. The obvious answer is that Hermann's seventy-year-old self has traveled back in time to his current body and taken over. Second, and, already settled warm in his chest, is the word itself. "Boy". It's a tiny flame inside of him, and he thinks of a candle lighting the dark, and then he thinks of a curtain on fire, burning the entire house down, everyone inside dead, and this is why his ventures into the fine arts started and ended with music, his brain can't even be trusted alone with a metaphor.

*

Newt realizes he's a girl during his first year at uni, primarily because of the fawning comments from the students in the introductory English class that everyone has to take, no exceptions even for obnoxious kid geniuses. There are two electrical engineering majors who are always trying to do his hair, or offering to paint his nails, or buying him sunhats and scarves and lacey little sweaters like he's one of those little purse dogs. There are a couple professors who make him uncomfortable for reasons he doesn't yet have the words for. A couple others who talk down to him no matter how high his grades, one TA who flat out tells him he should probably find a different field because being a girl in STEM isn't worth the bullshit. He's given a single room in the dorms, right beside the RA, and for the first three months the administration tries to enforce a curfew because they don't want him walking around campus alone after dark.

Newt realizes he's a guy in the summer after his first year, when he's cramming in as many of the basic requirements for the humanities part of his joint major as he can given the spring and summer class schedules and his unfortunate need to do things like eat and sleep. There's a girl in his Baroque and Classical music course who is casually open about being trans, and they usually wind up sitting together at the back of the room because neither of them ever show up on time. She never talks to him, and he's got another class immediately afterwards that he's always got to rush off to, but she does an interview for somebody's blog about her experiences being trans and it gets sent out in a student newsletter. Newt can't relate to a lot of what she says, but it gets him thinking, and once his brain's got a hold of an idea there's no letting go until he's done with it.

He cuts his own hair in the dorm bathroom at three in the morning, emails all his professors for Fall semester -- "I just wanted to clear up any confusion, I'll show up on your list as Nina, but I go as Newt, really looking forward to your classes, thanks in advance" -- and books an appointment with his mandatory school counselor.

This sets the tone for... a long time, honestly.

"You're still very young, and it can be pretty confusing spending so much time with people so much older than you. I think you need to give this some more time. Wait until you're eighteen."

So he finds his own fucking psychiatrist.

"I know I said I'd be happy to work with you over the phone, but I've had the chance to take a look at your intake form and, well, it's very important that you make this decision from a clear and stable point of view. Maybe we can revisit this once your bipolar disorder has been handled."

Newt reports that one for medical malpractice, because he's pretty sure when a fourteen-year-old kid understands mental illness better than you it's time to take a good long look at your professional choices.

He tries to tell his dad, because all the doctors want parental consent for anything even if they do take him seriously, but every time he sort of winds up tripping over his words and mumbling excuses or sending the conversation off on a totally different topic. He buys a couple binders, keeps his hair short, buys ill-fitting clothes from the men's and boy's sections in stores. Graphic t-shirts are baggy enough to sort of hide his body and nerdy enough that he doesn't feel like he's wearing a costume.

He gets his first PHD, and it's jarring to see the wrong name on the certificate. He reads books and posts online where people talk about how they can pass if they wear the right clothes, or how somebody saw them from behind and called them "sir", or how people will ask if they're a boy or a girl. Newt has never once, to his knowledge, been seen as a guy, or even confused anybody. He's short, and even with the binder he still feels like his chest is fucking obvious, and no matter how long he goes without eating he still has hips. He doesn't know what he's doing wrong, and he forces it to the back of his head because if he's going to obsess about anything it may as well be science. At least that makes him happy.

He gets his first tattoo after a random guy puts a hand on the small of his back at a concert and wont' back off even when Newt swears at him. Nothing else happens, and the guy disappears pretty quick, but even three weeks later Newt feels like that piece of skin isn't his, like it's somehow been separated out from the rest of his body and tainted. By week four he's dissociating pretty bad, and he's had the Godzilla movies on in the background for a solid 24 hours, and a tattoo seems like the best idea he's ever had. He has to go to three different shops before he finds one that will take him as a walk in and also accept his shitty fake ID, but once he walks out with a little Godzilla burning under bandages on his back he feels more grounded than he has in like, six months.

He publishes as N. Geiszler, legally adds Newton as his middle name as an eighteenth birthday present to himself. All of his PHDs are under the wrong name, and he doesn't know if they'll re-issue them. Plus, he's made a name for himself, and unless he's there to correct them, that name isn't always Newt.

He wears a lot of baggy jeans because it seems like that's what he's supposed to want. Dress pants are technically an option, but also fuck that noise. Eventually he just gives up and starts wearing skinny jeans. People are gonna see him as a girl no matter what he's wearing, he may as well feel good about his fashion choices. The first time he tries a skinny tie is basically the best day of his year.

He plans to see a new psychiatrist, get the letter, get the hormones, get the fucking process moving. But there's always science to do, coursework to grade, research and writing and drinking and dancing and lying on his bed staring at the ceiling because there's no real point in moving anyway. He's a busy guy. And maybe there's a tiny part of him that's sick of being 'that person'. He's been the German kid and the mentally ill kid and the too-young kid and the too-smart kid and for the first time he's being recognized for his hard work and intelligence divorced from all those other factors and it's addicting. He'll take attention however he can get it, but this is the first time it hasn't come with a bitter aftertaste and he suddenly doesn't want to run the risk of muddying it. If he thinks about it he feels like a coward and a fraud and a quitter, so he doesn't think about it.

He lets people assume what they want to about him, keeps introducing himself as Newt and makes no concessions to the social scripts people expect him to follow. He doesn't date, mostly because if he doesn’t have time to make his body match his brain he sure as shit doesn't have time to go through the production of romance and sex and all that entails.

He has a few bad months when he's 23, social and physical dysphoria clashing together over the jagged shores of his anxiety and the impending sense of doom that comes with the flood of people his age getting married and having kids and buying houses. He makes an appointment with a psychiatrist and actually goes, writes out a game plan, starts doing research on surgeons and altering legal documentation.

And then a giant alien monster smashes San Francisco.

He's a little distracted after that.

Saying he has a new specialization is putting it too kindly. A new obsession. A new defining characteristic. The first tattoo feels like what he imagines top surgery feels like. Like he's finally taking steps to get comfortable in his own skin. Like his body actually belongs to him, like he's showing the world what he wants them to see for the first time

People talk about him behind his back, and to his face, and he just. Doesn't. Care. Freak. Crazy. Unprofessional. Silly. Fake. Heartless. He's heard them all before, this shit is nothing new except now he's got images of blue blood and complex internal silicone (silicone!) systems and claws and teeth playing on a loop in the back of his head, and he's got more grant funding than he knows what to do with (this is a lie, he has an itemized list), and he's got some asshole on the other side of the ocean who will not only read his 6:00 AM emails about Kaiju metabolism but will reply with an equally lengthy message about the ways the laws of physics as they know them would have to bend to allow for the breach. Newt is unstoppable. Newt is a rock star on the rise. Newt is probably going to be dead in ten years, along with everybody else on the planet, and he can't even bring himself to care. He types faster, turns his music louder, and the certainty of the fucking apocalypse is just another kind of invincibility.

The first person who asks Newt what his pronouns are is a kid in one of his undergrad Biochem classes. She shows up to his reluctant office hours, long straight brown hair and worn running shoes, an old backpack covered in pealing stickers and magic marker scribbles with her high school ID still stuffed in the little plastic pocket on the front. She looks almost as boring as the class she's coming to ask about. Newt wonders if she'd file a complaint if he just shut the door in her face.

Her questions are predictably idiotic, but what he doesn't predict is the way she pauses, hovering at the door on her way out, and asks all in a rush "Oh, um, I was just wondering because I wasn’t really sure and I didn’t wanna be offensive or anything so I just wanted to ask what your pronouns are? Sorry if that's, uh, weird. Or offensive."

Newt stares at her with his mouth hanging open for an embarrassingly long time. "Uhh," he says. "That's. Uhh. They're... whatever? I mean, I'm a dude, but I don't have the time to explain this shit to everybody." And then, because she's looking kind of alarmed and confused, and also because Newt is motherfucking untouchable and they're all gonna die anyways, he says, "He. His. Like I said, I'm a dude. A guy--" fuck, is 24 too old to say the word 'dude'?

"Ok," she says, and flees, which is probably a good call.

Newt texts Hermann, because that's just what he does these days, that's his go-to, no matter how often his dad implies Newt's gonna wind up getting axe murdered through the power of he internet or something -- "I can literally show you his face, Jesus Christ, look, he's on the Cambridge website, this is called collaborating with a colleague, look at his dumb haircut, does this haircut scream 'stranger danger' to you?".

'I just did something potentially terrifying, distract me with math immediately'

Hermann actually responds within five minutes.

'I believe I've just been disinherited over sub-par sushi, if it makes you feel better. Christ, this is why I don't come to Manchester, the north is unbearable.'

Newt gives in and closes his door, pulls up one of his grad student's most recent round of edits on one monitor and opens Pidgin on the other, but Hermann’s not online.

'Like, you were disinherited because of the sushi? That was remarkably imprecise, bud, are you ok?'

'I wasn't imprecise, you simply revel in deliberate misinterpretation. I had dinner with my father. We got into an argument about our respective fields of study, more specifically the application of those fields. There was rather a lot of sake and now I'm quite certain I'm not welcome home for the holidays.'

Newt's still trying to figure out what to say, and if they should be having this conversation in German (it seems like it qualifies as a serious real talk conversation, so probably) when his phone vibrates again.

'I already regret this as I type, but what terrible decision have you made now? An action which you find "terrifying" strains the imagination, and now I'm morbidly curious.'

'Excuse you,' Newt types. 'i make great choices'

'Not an answer.'

'Yeah. Never mind. Not actually important. Tell me about your family drama, you'll feel better i swear'

He has, so far, been surprisingly successful at keeping online photographic evidence of his existence to a minimum. If Hermann had wanted to find a picture of Newt, he would have had to dig a lot deeper than the MIT website. He's in the background of a few public photos on facebook, but he's made sure he's not tagged, and his own profile is locked down tight. And that's assuming Hermann doesn't just burst into flames and turn to dust when he opens any sort of social media. Newt follows his twitter account even though there are no actual tweets because if Hermann ever does use it he needs to be the first to know.

Hermann has only ever referred to him as Dr. Geiszler or 'Newton', which is weirdly endearing, mostly because literally nobody else has ever called him Newton. Newt doesn't know if Hermann is just deliberately not asking questions, or if he thinks Newt's parents just had weird ideas about baby names, or if he's honestly never sifted through Newt's history closely enough to make the connections from Nina Geiszler to N. Geiszler to N. Newton Geiszler. There have been a couple times where Hermann has tried to call him because text couldn't fully communicate the levels of his rage, but Newt's always let it go to his automated voicemail recording. He may or may not have saved all of Hermann's messages. Better to go with not, that's less weird.

Eventually, Newt gives in and does the whole Jaeger Academy (and seriously? Do they live in an anime?) shtick. It's exactly as terrible as he's expecting, but he just keeps telling himself that there are endless Kaiju samples at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel just happens to be filled with room-sharing and locker rooms and if it's not Newt forcing himself to react every time the beefy white bread stereotype who is their drill sergeant or whatever bellows "ladies!", it's a new set of hotshot pilots high on whatever they've smuggled in this week beating the shit out of him in an empty storage room because of his tattoos. It's every single bullying after-school special turned up to eleven without the warm fuzzy moral at the end.

Newt spends a lot of time muttering "I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself," under his breath until he makes the mistake of texting it to Hermann and then has to avoid a barrage of increasingly frantic phone calls and texts and threats to report him to the on-base doctors.

'Sorry, that was shitty,' Newt texts, carefully. 'Mostly I mean I'm going to kill all these assholes but when I'm that angry my brain isn't picky about it's targets.'

And then, 'I'm not actually going to kill anybody, for the record. Shitty hyperbole, i'm a fuckawful person. I'm not suicidal and if i were don’t worry i definitely wouldn't advertise it'

'That is in no way as reassuring as I believe you intended it to be.'

'If it helps we're all gonna die anyway, i'm one of two actually intelligent people in the K-Sci track'

'You once told me anyone with fewer than two doctorates just isn't applying themselves.'

'I apologized for that and also i was drunk let it go ffs'

‘Ich hätte wenigstens gehofft dass du mit einem Arzt sprichst wenn du wirklich suizidal bist. Ich weiss ja was du von Ärzten hältst, mir...wäre es genug wenn du wenigstens mich es wissen lässt.’

Newt doesn't actually respond, because calm the fuck down, Gottlieb. But he does make a point of being more aware of the sorts of comments he makes outside of his own head.

He makes it through training with muscles where they've never shown before and a broken nose and access to all the fucking Kaiju samples the PPDC can get their hands on. It's totally worth it. He's a tad less inclined to save humanity after six months with some of the shittier parts of it, but he did manage to make friends with a couple of the techs, and Hermann says he's proud of him, and his uncle sends him a giant basket of fruit cut like flowers as a graduation present which is the weirdest and most hilariously unexpected shit he's seen in years.

He also realizes that he and Hermann are finally! Going to be at the same conference, and Newt spends most of the month leading up to it vibrating with anticipation. He's also terrified, of course, but the fear is drowned out by the repeating "friend friend friend friend friend!" bouncing around in his head. He's a puppy. He doesn't even care.

They make arrangements to meet in the lobby of the hotel two hours after Newt's flight gets in. Probably one of them should have suggested dinner, or drinks, or coffee, or maybe waiting until the next morning, but Newt absolutely does not have that sort of patience, and he figures the more formally official they make their first meeting the more potential for awkwardness there is.

Newt kind of regrets this choice when he stumbles out of the cab in front of the hotel entrance, his mouth tasting like stale coffee and his hoodie and jeans probably smelling like airplane. His hair is weirdly flattened in the back and somehow feels greasy even though he'd showered less than eight hours before. He hitches his backpack higher on his shoulders, and feels suddenly, sharply young and unprofessional and Jesus Christ, what if Hermann doesn't even realize it's Newt when he comes up to him? What if he has to do a whole awkward introduction thing and then it's uncomfortable and Hermann is embarrassed or confused or doesn't believe him? This was a terrible idea. Meeting Hermann. Also Newt's entire life. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He's still standing frozen on the sidewalk when Hermann himself walks right in front of Newt carrying a Starbucks cup, clearly in a hurry. Newt doesn’t know what he was expecting, he's never known a Starbucks near a conference not to be crowded and slow. Academics need their caffeine.

Herman doesn't even look his way. He reaches the door to the hotel a couple steps before a guy in a suit so slick he's gotta be a lawyer, and just as Hermann's about to push the door open lawyer guy launches himself forward, knocking hard into Hermann's elbow and splashing coffee down his sleeve. Hermann sways, the cane in his other hand wobbles alarmingly. Newt can't see his face, but he can imagine it.

"Here, here, I've got the door!" Lawyer guy announces, pushing it open and standing half in the doorway, arm up to hold the door open so Hermann’s gonna have to duck under his armpit if he wants to get through.

"It's fine," Hermann says, icily. "Go ahead."

"No no," lawyer reaches out a hand and pushes at Hermann's shoulder. "You go on."

Newt rushes forward, practically tripping over his own feet. "Buddy, he said he's fine," he snaps, both because he wants to defend Hermann's honour and also because he doesn't want Hermann to get arrested for homicide before he's given his second talk (Saturday, 2:00 PM, Main Ballroom, Newt is bringing fucking popcorn).

"It's fine," Hermann mutters. Lawyer guy stares down at Newt like he's something he's scraped off the bottom of his shoe. Newt spins to face Hermann. "Hey, hey, hey, so how bad is the Starbucks line, exactly, because fuck airplane coffee and also I haven't slept in like, days, and also do you have a phone charger, because I sure don't, and also holy shit, hello, you're a real person. Sorry. Fuck. I was fine until like, three minutes ago, and then it was surprise, motherfucker, everybody loves panicking." He spins back to glare at lawyer guy. "Seriously, pal, fuck off, why are you still standing there?"

"I was offering assistance to this gentleman before you barged in--"

"Oh, oh, were you? Did you even ask him if he wanted your "assistance?" Because I didn’t see any asking, I just saw like, minor assault and sacrificed caffeine--"

"Newton," Hermann says, sharply, practically right in his ear. "Shut up."

Newt's teeth snap together so hard he's scared for a minute he's bitten the tip off his tongue. Hermann knows who he is, oh thank fuck. He's even telling him to shut up, which is practically an endearment at this point in their friendship.

"Come on," Hermann says coldly, and turns away back down the sidewalk, presumably toward the Starbucks. Newt follows, leaving lawyer guy to, hopefully, actually go into the hotel. Hermann walks fast, which Newt almost comments on, but maybe that's insensitive? Hermann's never mentioned any sort of disability, but he seems reasonably comfortable with the cane so it's probably not a temporary injury. 

They go around the corner, past the Starbucks (Newt almost objects, but Hermann is pretty clearly not in the mood to humour him) and finally stop at the edge of a back alley, in a little alcove created by the jutting exit of a parking garage.

"My dad was right, you're going to murder me," Newt says. Hermann finally faces him full on.

"What was that little display meant to accomplish?"

Newt takes a half step back. "Woah, dude, sorry. What, the thing with that asshole? Because I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as a "display"," he gives the final word all of Hermann's crisp RP intonation, rolling his eyes.

"It was not a situation that required your... intervention."

"I wasn't trying to like, imply you couldn't deal with it yourself, he was just being a jerk and you're my friend so..." Newt shrugs, lingering self-consciousness tugging his shoulders down and his hands into his pockets.

Hermann opens his mouth, then pauses. Newt counts to ten, and Hermann starts talking, which is kind of great. "That sort of thing happens every day. Usually more than once a day. It's an irritation. Perhaps, depending on the situation, an embarrassment. And then it's over. Making a scene of it makes an obnoxious mountain out of an unpleasant molehill. I'm perfectly capable of dealing with any individuals who are causing me legitimate harm or even significant inconvenience. That is not up to you or anyone else to decide."

Newt wants to pull up his hood so he can hide even more. "Sorry," he mutters. "I guess I was... surprised. I mean, I guess I was just... unprepared? I didn't know you used a cane and it's not like I like, needed time to prepare for that that's not what I meant, just that I'm not the best at working through social cues at the best of times, which you know, and I sort of reacted without thinking."

Hermann sighs. "I never mentioned my cane because I assumed it would be a non-issue. It's hardly the sort of thing that just comes up in conversation. I suppose I should have taken your stunning lack of self-awareness into account."

Newt tries not to bristle and fails. "Ok, first meeting and we're hitting hard out of the gate, cool, good to know you're just as much of a dick in person."

Hermann says, "Go get some sleep. I'm likely to say something I'll regret if I have to keep talking to you when you're in this state."

"yeah, get fucked," Newt snaps, because he is not in any "state", thank you, Hermann has no goddamn place sending him to his room like a mis-behaving toddler.

He leaves, and gets a coffee just to be contrary, and then gets angry that he's probably reacting exactly like the sort of person Hermann thinks he is. He throws out the coffee, half-drunk, and checks in to the hotel. He sleeps for sixteen hours, but he's still pissed at Hermann when he wakes up.

They don't see each other the first day of sessions. Newt is on one panel, but he doesn't find Hermann anywhere in the audience. He networks the evening away and still doesn’t see him. The next morning, Newt drags his hungover ass down the block to the Starbucks and, naturally, that's where he finally finds Hermann.

"Hey, dude," Newt says, tapping Hermann on the shoulder.

"Newton," Hermann says, flatly.

"Can we maybe try this again?" Newt asks. He's gonna be the bigger man. Let his anger go. Adult the hell out of this situation.

"I suspect that might be best," Hermann says. "I don't think either of us came off particularly well on Thursday."

The line moves forward, and Hermann places his order. They're apparently standing close enough that the guy behind the counter looks to Newt before he offers Hermann his total.

"Anything for you, Miss?"

Newt is used to this, but he's not used to it happening in front of Hermann. "Uhm," he says, intelligently.

"A large coffee," Hermann says, and usually Newt hates when people speak for him, but at the moment he's just grateful to be spared whatever panicky bullshit would have come out of his mouth.

They continue down the counter. He hunches his shoulders, stares down at the floor.

"Newton," Hermann says, and that's good, but it's also 'what if he's just playing along? What if he's just humouring me?'. "Are you coming to my 2:00 talk?"

"Yes," Newt says, too fast. "I am absolutely coming to your 2:00 PM talk. You're gonna piss so many people off."

Hermann huffs. "Not everyone holds the same disdain for theoretical work as you do."

"Hey, hey, I love theories, theories are great. But they stop being great when you haven't produced any concrete results in three years and they're still pumping funding into your projects in the vague hope that one day maybe a piece of actionable information falls out of the sky."

Fighting with Hermann is a lot more dramatic when he can actually hear Hermann's side of the argument in that fucking pretentious accent.

Things never really feel comfortable during the conference, and for a few months after the frequency of their correspondence drops dramatically. Newt is sure he's fucked up the most important friendship in is life, but when the next Kaiju attacks Hermann calls him to gloat about his predictive model and they stay on the phone together for four hours, witnesses to the next step in their own destruction. Newt has a moment while they're on the phone where he's struck yet again by the beauty and the mystery of each Kaiju, the complexities of their design, the potentials created by the unique adaptations each one presents. He wonders how long Kaiju live. Born to fight and die like a flash of brilliant light burning through the darkness of the ocean--

"Don't bother booking your appointment yet," Hermann says. "I have it on good authority you're getting transferred next week. You'll have to find a new artist."

Turns out Hermann knows he's getting transferred because they're both getting sent to Sydney.

"this is either gonna be really great, or really terrible," Newt says. "This is me being self-aware. Let's make it great."

They manage to do both.

It takes like, three years of working together before Newt notices that Hermann somehow manages to avoid using pronouns for him. It's impressively done, never obvious, and when Newt figures it out he brings Hermann morning tea for a month. ...Hermann may possibly spend the first week assuming the tea is somehow poisoned or otherwise tampered with. Whatever. That's not Newt's problem.

He finally meets Vanessa in person on Hermann's 32nd birthday, when she shows up at the door to the lab and Hermann almost falls off his ladder.

One of the other scientists says "Oh shit, Gottleib, big mistake letting the work wife and the home wife meet."

Vanessa stares at him with the deadest eyes Newt has ever seen until he scuttles away. Newt already likes her.

Hermann makes a distressed noise, staring up at his equations. Vanessa shakes her head. "I don’t mind, finish your thought." She pulls a folder from her purse, straightening it out and striding gracefully towards Newt.

"Newt, it's lovely to finally meet you. Now, I have some... questions about your last paper."

Well, Newt thinks. He always knew he was gonna die young.

Hermann interrupts them an hour later -- "If you two are entirely done yelling about communicable diseases. Which, may I add, fall nowhere near either of your fields."

"Fuck off, dear," Vanessa says, mildly. "We all know you find the biological sciences strangely intriguing. You do have a type."

Newt would like to point out that chemical engineering is hardly a biological science, but he's also pretty sure Vanessa could and would snap him like a twig and not even get blood on her designer jacket. Hermann has gone from resignedly fond to legitimately pissed in no time flat, and Newt decides he needs to be somewhere else immediately. Right after he gets Vanessa's number, because hey, he had pretty good results in his first online academic rage friendship with a Gottleib, why not try for a second?

The more funding that gets cut, the faster and better the higher-ups want them all working. And, of course, the more they want everybody with any sort of seniority attending press conferences and important meetings and working lunches.

"Round table meeting tomorrow morning," the Marshall says one night, poking her head into the lab. "Congratulations, you two were the first ones I found so you're coming with me. Formal dress," she adds. "Geiszler, that means you."

Newt freezes.

"I will measure the width of your tie if I need to," she says, darkly. "And black jeans do not count as dress pants. Also, Dr. Gottleib Senior will be there, so. Prepare yourselves. Remember how much we all like money."

Hermann is perfectly frozen, eyes wide behind is glasses. Newt tilts his head, staring at the place where the Marshall had been standing. "Huh," he says. "You know, I don't even know her name? And for the first time, I feel actually bad about that. I think I like her."

"You can borrow one of my ties," Hermann says, distantly. Newt is already preparing himself for Gottleib family damage control.

They get transferred to Hong Kong in the winter, and one of the first things Newt does is go hunting through unfamiliar streets and shops for a jacket. He finds a leather jacket that may or may not be real leather, but it's cheap and it matches his hashtag aesthetic, and his last leather jacket is living a good life in a nightclub in Kyoto that he has only the faintest memories of. His 30th birthday was a terrible fucking time, but if anyone asks he had a blast.

Hermann judges his jacket. Loudly, and often. And then Newt comes into the lab early Saturday morning and Hermann’s skyping with Vanessa, which is less surprising when you remember that they are two of three scientists left in the Shatterdome and the wireless in their rooms is shitty.

Hermann doesn't notice him when he first comes in, and Newt pauses just inside the doorway.

"It's intolerable," Hermann is saying. "I used to have dignity. Self-respect. A sense of self-preservation."

"Good morning, Newt," Vanessa calls, because apparently the webcam has a wider field than he thought. "I like your jacket."

Hermann makes a terrible gurgling noise and places his face on his desk. Vanessa laughs so hard she starts coughing.

"I would like a divorce," Hermann tells his desk, primly.

"Shall we talk about what else you'd like, darling?"

Hermann reaches up and, without looking, ends the call. "Good morning," he says. “If you'll excuse me, I need to go smoke my last four cigarettes and possibly throw myself into the ocean.”

"I'm not even gonna ask," Newt decides. Herman sighs.

"That's probably for the best."

Newt gets a fever in the middle of summer. Hermann tells him it's because of his field trip with the recovery crews to pick out the best Kaiju samples, to which Newt says something about how glad he is that Hermann's not that kind of doctor, and hey, Newt got a doctor fired once, good times, and also Hermann looks really weirdly like the doctor from Torchwood, not like, capital D Doctor, but the asshole one who was sleeping with everyone. Later, he's lying in Medical while an IV pumps fluids into him and Hermann stands beside his bed taking notes on the maintenance of Newt's samples in the lab because there is no way Newt is going to let his own shitty immune system destroy any of his work. He's wearing a stupid paper gown and a thin cotton blanket, and he realizes very suddenly that this is the first time Hermann's seen him without a binder, and he thinks he's going to throw up.

"Fuck," he says. "Fuck." He's shaking, pulling his knees up to his chest and curling in on himself and he knows he's just drawing more attention to it, knows Hermann's going to ask what's wrong or, God forbid, get a doctor, and then Newt's gonna have to make up some sort of excuse, but he can't make himself stop. It's like he's outside his body, and oh hey, he'd thought the dissociating had passed with his twenties but apparently not.

Hermann shifts uncomfortably, and for a minute Newt thinks he's just gonna run away, which would in fact be stellar. But then he clears his throat, puts a hand between Newt's shoulder blades and just leaves it there.

"Are you in pain?" he asks.

"No," Newt says, automatically.

"Right. Well then. There are special instructions for the liver, I believe you said?"

Newt has jumped fast through panic and now he's just numbly floating somewhere outside his body, so it's easy to continue on with his instructions.

Hermann leaves when he's done, but Newt overhears him speaking quietly to a nurse, and once the IV bag is empty he's released to return to his own room.

There's a point when one of the J-Techs follows Newt out of the mess hall and, bouncing on her heels, says "It was really great to see you here when I got transferred in. Nice to know I'm not the only one who had to fight the good fight through STEM with bonus military, you know? I know we're not in the same area, but I just wanted to let you know I've got your back."

Newt, who is a bad person, says "Cool thanks," all one word, and literally runs away. The tech never speaks to him again.

Things continue. More Kaiju appear in the ocean and then on Newt's skin. The PPDC gets smaller and smaller. Newt and Hermann fight like the ocean, high and low tides, forced intimacy and never fast enough, never good enough even though they're the best there is, people still die, cities still fall. The world is still ending and it is impossible to have anything like a normal friendship in the circumstances.

And then, yeah, it's a Tuesday and Hermann says "dear boy" like it's nothing, like he's not even thinking about it, and Newt wants to climb inside his chest and curl up behind his ribs, safe and warm. They don't talk about it, naturally.

Newt drifts with a piece of Kaiju brain and is expecting to die not through a lack of his own brilliance but rather as an appropriate conclusion to his narrative. He's a rock star. A hero. He's gonna find the answers and then all of this, the race he has been running against himself since he first looked at his own hand and wondered how it worked, will be worth something. Hermann finds him, and for a brief second Newt thinks Hermann has somehow saved him just to be a dick, just to throw a spanner in the works of his final act of genius. He never says this, which is good, because Hermann would have likely never spoken to him again.

Saving the world happens in snapshots. Newt is on the floor of the lab and not dead, he's staring down Hannibal Chau and not dead, he's face-to-face with a Kaiju and he's not dead, there's a fucking theme here, he's invincible. He drifts with Hermann and immediately wants a do-over, because that should have been special, something just for them, they should have been allowed to take their time. He's glad the Kaiju hivemind is there with them. It feels right, even if nothing else does. Hermann wraps a hand around his wrist on the helicopter and keeps a tight grip all the way back to the Shatterdome, and when they land Newt feels like he's been tethered down just enough to keep from blowing away in the downwash.

They save the world. Which is great. It's great. It's really great and not at all a direct contradiction to Newt's entire life philosophy for the past 13 years. This is fine. So he's gonna... grow old. So he's gonna have to face his family and find a new job and meet new people and find a new discipline and

"Newton," Hermann says, sharply. They're sitting in the hallway outside of their lab because Hermann was white with silent pain by the time the first Champaign cork popped, and Newt had picked up a beer, thought 'Probably shouldn't drink so soon after fucking around with my head, but what does it matter?' and then been hit with the realization that it suddenly does matter rather a lot. Fatalism is going to be a difficult coping mechanism to get away from.

"You'll be alright," Herman tells him, quietly.

"Noooo, nope, I probably really won't be, buddy, but thanks for the vote of confidence-- hey, have you ever seen a dude get eaten right in front of you? Because that's sure a visual, did you catch that in the drift, because I was trying not to think about it so obviously it was at the front of my mind, sorry."

"Stop," Hermann says, firmly. “I hardly meant you'd be fine right away. But eventually, I'm quite certain.”

“I'm thirty-six,” Newt says, a little hysterically. “I'm not supposed to grow old.” 'I'm not supposed to have to suffer through this for another fifty years,' he means, and apparently Hermann picks up on that, because he gets a pinched little frown, and reaches out to squeeze Newt's hand.

“I certainly don't claim to be any sort of expert,” he says, carefully, “but surely, Newton, you must know that there's no such thing as being too old to, well, transition, if that's the correct terminology.”

Newt stares at the wall directly across from him for a long couple minutes. “So,” he says, slowly. “I'd never actually consciously freaked out about that? But hey, glad we're just... putting all our cards on the table. At some point we're gonna need a moratorium on casually bringing up shit we discovered in the drift.”

“I'm not sorry,” Hermann says. “You would have had to consider this eventually. I've done a small amount of research, just for my own awareness, and there's nothing stopping you if that's something you want.”

“You knew before the drift,” Newt accuses him.

“I suspected. It didn't seem like it was something you wanted to discuss, so I respected your wishes. And I do admit, as awful as it was of me, I had always assumed that you were a man before we met in person that first time. And aside from a few physical differences, I frankly never saw anything to disabuse me of that notion.”

“I hope Vanessa kicked your ass for that assumption,” Newt says, grinning despite himself. “Which, hey, speaking of personal details we learned in the drift, you're not an inherently bad person for totally wanting to bone me, and since you've got Vanessa's enthusiastic permission and encouragement you wouldn't be a bad person if you, you know, actually made a move instead of pining away like a forest over there.”

Hermann draws his hand away. “I know this, logically,” he says. Newt, a saint among men, does not make a comment about the many and varied ways religion fucks people up. “Besides, it's hardly relevant if you're not interested.”

Newt determinedly grabs his hand back. “Just because I never thought of it doesn't mean I'm not interested. Sex isn't ever really an aspect I consider in a relationship unless I'm specifically looking for it. And I guess I kind of figured our relationship meant more than romance.”

Hermann frowns at Newt like he's a mildly interesting equation. “I suspect we're working with different definitions of romance.”

Newt shrugs. “Dead plants. Chocolate. Obligatory sex. Weird social conventions. I'm either too clingy or too distant.”

Hermann shakes his head. “For some people, perhaps. But... Vanessa is my best friend. One of my best friends.” He actually blushes a tiny bit. “I admit there are elements of romance that I experience that you would probably find distasteful or unrelatable, but it in no way invalidates how others experience it. I suspect you and Vanessa are more similar in this aspect.”

“I can't handle this conversation right now,” Newt says. “Like, mentally and emotionally. I'm gonna bluescreen.”

“Of course, I’m sorry." Newt lets himself tip sideways until he's leaning his head against Hermann's shoulder. They both smell like ammonia, which Newt finds kind of soothing but Hermann probably hates. Hermann puts an arm around Newt's shoulders, but there's still tension running through his muscles. Newt huffs.

“We'll plot our future on a spreadsheet tomorrow, dude, I promise,” he says. “Sleep on it.”

“Tomorrow,” Hermann says, darkly, “I'll be stuck on this floor forever.”

“Oh, shit,” Newt says. “Sorry. Do you want to go back to our rooms? Did you take any painkillers?”

“No, it's alright,” says Hermann. “Let's stay here a little while longer.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://thought-42.tumblr.com).


End file.
